Previously on The Trip:

DSC00037
Originally uploaded by woden325.

I said that I'd have more to say about Hampton Court Palace, as well as Hever Castle.
At Hampton Court, I was partucularly impressed with the formal gardens, which were very elegant. There were a few groundskeepers in the courtyard of the palace who seemed to be poised to trim any piece of grass that grew a quarter-inch out of line.
Dawn, Brianna, Connie, Terry, and I took a short walk to the round fountain and the long pond. (I'll have to check those names, as my guide is in the luggage-hold of out coach. As I write this, we are cruising up the M1 between Rugby and Leicester.) On Flickr, you can see Dawn getting menaced by a very pushy swan.
After that, we walked back to the train station and caught a train back to Waterloo station, and thence to the hotel.
This same group was brave enough to accompany me to South Kensington when I tried to find the Vecchiomondo Restaurant. I've eaten at this Italian restaurant on each of my trips to London, and it's become a tradition. Unfortunately , I couldn't remember its location very accurately this time. It's in the Cromwell road, but I took everybody on a big detour up Gloucester Road and Queens Gate before I realized my mistake. Fortunately they were good sports about it. The dinner was very nice, if a bit expensive.
Afterward, we went out to see some of the sights there, and I took them by the Natural History Museum (link), the Royal Albert Hall, the Albert Memorial, Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Green Prk, Buckingham Palace and finally to Victoria Station. All told, it looked to be about 4 or 4½ miles after the detour, not including all the walking at Hampton Court or The Tower. It was lovely, but extra tiring. We got to the Hotel a couple of minutes before Midnight, and had a beer. It didn't take more than a couple of minutes of sitting for our legs to get all cramped up after all that walking.
In the morning, the whole group headed for Hever Castle. This was the home of Anne Bolyn. The main building was of Norman origin, but it had fallen into disrepair before William Waldorf Astor (of Waldorf-Astoria fame) bought it and revamped it. He spared no expense in the lavish woodwork and artwork of the castle, but unfortunately, it's difficult to tell how close it is to the castle of Anne's time.
It is surrounded by absolutely exquisite gardens, and as you can see from my pictures, it's very photogenic. We got to the castle just as the garden opened, and we were able to wander through it before it got really crowded. The formal Italian Sculpture garden is outstanding, and the piazza and pond are perfect.
Sonoko and I toured the castle, after waiting for 20 minutes in the queue and watching the ducks duking it out in the moat. The interior of the castle is lovely, but as i said before, it's hard to tell what it would have been like in the time of Henry VIII. I particulaly liked the gatehouse, (which displays a particularly nasty collection of torture devices) because it seemed to have most of the original stonework intact.
After a harrowing drive back to London (our poor driver had to contend with terrible traffic jams and some spectacularly stupid drivers and pedestrians) Sonoko, Sharon, and I went for dinner at the Helping Hand pub next to the Russel Square tube station. I love this pub. I had a magnificent Steak and Ale pie for dinner, for the second time in a week.
From there, we went to the Regent's park Open-Air theatre for a performance of The Taming of the Shrew. I kept nodding off in the first half because all the walking (and the beer, probably), but a good cup of coffee set that straight. The play was a preview, and it was clear that they were still working out the kinks in the perfomance, A few lines were muffed, and they stepped on each other's cues a bit, and Petruchio clubbed his servant for real at one point, but other than that itwas a good performance. They were, for some reason, in 1950's era costumes, but it wasn't overly distracting, and they didn't try to modernize the language, which is a pluss.
This brings me up to when I sat down in the bar to post last night.
This morning, which was ironically a beautiful sunny day, we checked out of the hotel in London and packed on to the coach for York. I'm looking forward to this, because Northern England feels as much like home as the Pikes Peak region. Our driver is a Geordie named Paul, and he seems like a good guy. On par with George, from my last trip, and worlds ahead of the infamous Ted (the Basil Fawlty-like driver from my first trip.)
We've just past Bolsover, and we'll probably be breaking for lunch soon.